


4 Times Karen Page Patched up Frank Castle and 1 Time She Didn't

by IfThisIsLoveIDoNotWantIt



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Times, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IfThisIsLoveIDoNotWantIt/pseuds/IfThisIsLoveIDoNotWantIt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank has a nasty habit of swinging by Karen's place at the oddest times of night. Usually when he's losing blood. It becomes their new routine, but everything changes when it's Frank patching Karen up instead of the other way around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Surprise Visitor

Karen was exhausted. Dumping her bag on the ground, she tossed her keys onto the little table sitting next to the door of her new apartment. She needed a new one after the last one got filled with bullet holes. Karen had spent the entire day pounding the pavement, looking for leads on her newest story. Unfortunately, she turned up empty. Worst of all, her feet ached from being in her heels all day and her feet were murdering her. The prospect of her crappy mattress, the one with the spring that always seemed to stab her in the back, never seemed so alluring.

  
Kicking off her heels and enjoying the coolness of the tile floor against her feet, Karen trod over to the refrigerator in her tiny kitchen. She opened the door and inspected her options, there weren’t many. A half-filled carton of milk, some day-old take-out, and some seriously questionable sandwich meat. She really needed to go grocery shopping. The problem was that she spent most of her days in her new office at the Bulletin. Karen mainly lived on coffee and take-out these days. Sighing, Karen shut the door to the fridge. She didn’t need food anyways, what she really needed right now was some well-deserved sleep.

  
She collapsed on the bed as soon as she walked into her bedroom. Karen didn’t even bother to undress any further as she pulled up the covers. She snuggled against her pillow, promising herself that everything would be better when she woke up.

  
The time on her alarm clock was flashing 1:37 when something woke Karen up. It was completely dark outside her window and only the usual New York noises filled the air, but they were distant and muffled and unlikely to have waken her. Karen was just about to roll over and go back to sleep when she heard a sudden banging noise inside of her apartment. Cautiously, she slipped out of bed and opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, reaching under stacks of neatly folded clothes for the .380 she kept there.

  
Holding the gun out in front of her with both hands, Karen quietly investigated the noise. Her mind raced back to that fateful night so long ago when that man had broken into her apartment to kill her. He would have done it too if Daredevil, no Matt, if Matt hadn’t have shown up and stopped him. She had to keep reminding herself that they were the same person. Matt wasn’t going to show up this time. This time, she could protect herself.

  
Quietly, she entered the living room and looked for the source of the noise. There! In the doorway, the shadow of a man. Pulling up her gun, she leveled it at his chest. “Who are you? I swear to god, I’ll shoot you!”

  
The man staggered forward and Karen’s grip on the gun tightened. In the pale moonlight streaming through the cracks in the window blinds, Karen caught a flash of white across the man’s chest. Recognition started to dawn on her as a single word escaped the man’s mouth.

  
“Karen.” He whispers, right before he collapses on the floor. He even bangs against her coffee table on the way down.

  
Karen tosses her gun to the ground, probably not the best idea, but she can’t think right now. Not when Frank Castle is unconscious on her floor and probably bleeding out. She shoves the coffee table aside to get better access to him. Karen tries to pick him, wedging her arms underneath him, lifting with her knees, but he doesn’t budge. Frank must weigh a ton. She’ll never get him off the floor by herself. But since leaving him there isn’t much of an option, Karen will have to try.

  
Starting with his long, black trench coat, Karen starts pulling his clothes off. Once that’s gone, she can get to the straps of the bullet-proof vest with the skull stenciled on it. It’s a bulky, clumsy thing and Karen struggles trying to get the thing off of him. The damn thing must weigh 20 pounds.

  
Now, with the coat and vest out of the way, Karen can get her hands under his armpits and pick him up that way. She inches her way towards the couch and dumps him unceremoniously on it. For a moment she’s concerned that he’ll bleed all over it, but decides it doesn’t matter anyways. She’ll just flip the cushions. Karen stands over him, hands on her hips, looking down at Frank and sighs. “Goddammit, Frank. Why are you here?”

  
As soon as the words leave her mouth, Frank begins to stir. He must have heard her. His eyes open, first confused, then fearful, but when he looks up at her and their eyes meet, his face softens and his whole body relaxes. Dark bruises and bloody cuts mar his face, Karen can’t remember a time when that wasn’t the case.

  
“Do you have a first-aid kit?” His voice is rough and raw and he asks her directly, not bothering with pleasantries. If he won’t, neither will Karen. She goes to the bathroom and fishes around underneath the sink. Coming back out with it in her hands, Karen sees that he’s managed to sit himself up and is trying to pull off his undershirt, but is having a little bit of trouble. Karen sets down the first-aid kit on the table and moves to help him. They manage to get it over his head, though Karen can see him visibly wincing at the movement.

  
“What is it?” She asks him. “Where are you hurt?” Frank points to his right shoulder, Karen can see it now. Blood stains his whole shoulder and she can see where it went in, Frank must be in an incredible amount of pain.

  
“Do you have a pair of tweezers in there?” Karen nods and roots around in the box, through bandages and disinfectant before she finds the long, skinny pair of tweezers with the thin, pointed tip. “I need you to dig the bullet out.” He says, his voice raw with pain.

  
Karen shakes her head, vomit welling up in the back of her throat. She couldn’t do it. The thought of digging the thin tweezers into his body made her overwhelmingly nauseous. She shoves the tweezers into his left hand, the one with the working shoulder. “I can’t do it. You’re going to have to do it.” Karen pleads with him.

  
This time Frank shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have come here if I could do this myself.” He must see the fear written across Karen’s face, because he presses the tweezers back into her palm, “I trust you.”  
It was at this declaration that Karen finally relented. Swallowing her nausea, she leans over and turns on the floor lamp sitting next to the couch. If she was going to do this, she needed plenty of light. She aims the light at the wound and pulls out plenty of bandages. Getting up and walking into the bathroom, Karen wets some of the bandages. She’ll need to clean the wound of blood before she started poking around in there, if she wanted to be able to see what she’s doing.

  
Sitting back down next to Frank, Karen begins cleaning the bullet wound. The clot that had begun to form on his shoulder underneath all the armor, washed away and more blood flowed from the wound. That too she washed away. When it was reasonably clean, Karen pulled out the tweezers. Gripping them tightly in her hand, Karen forced herself to breathe deeply as she began to lightly probe the wound, testing for the bullet. Frank winced slightly against the pain and Karen whispered a hushed apology underneath her breath.

  
The bullet wasn’t too deep in. It had been stopped from going all the way through by Frank’s collarbone. Digging it out though, proved to be more difficult than anticipated. The tweezers struggled to gain a grip on the bullet as more blood flowed from the wound and her hold became slippery. She could tell she was causing Frank pain and she tried to do this quickly for his sake. At last, she managed to grasp the bullet and work it free. Silvery in the sickly glow of the floor lamp, but dark with blood, the bullet seemed so small to have caused so much damage. Not knowing what to do with it, Karen simply dropped the bullet on her coffee table. Grabbing a handful of the flimsy cloth squares from the first-aid kit, she tried to stop the bleeding and bandage Frank up. Holding the cloth against the wound, she wrapped the rest of the gauze around his shoulder, holding the bandage in place. As soon as she thought the bandage was secure, she stepped back.

  
Frank was breathing shallowly and was obviously in a great deal of pain. His eyes had taken on a somewhat glassy appearance and Karen could tell, with all the certainty of someone who knew nothing about doctoring, that he was going to pass out again.

  
When he woke up the next time, Karen still sat by his side, only half dozing in her salvaged arm chair. This time, Karen was prepared with a question.

  
“You want some coffee?”

  
Frank stared back at her for a moment with that strange unflinching gaze that she had now begun to associated with him. “If you’ve got any.” He responded finally, with a voice as rough and raw as sandpaper across an active machine gun.

  
Karen stood up and on weak legs walked herself into the kitchen where a pot of black coffee was already roasting. Pulling out two coffee cups from the cupboard, Karen poured herself and Frank a cup of coffee. She pressed one cup into his uninjured hand before sitting back down with her own cup. Leaving hers untouched, Karen watched Frank as he took a long sip of coffee, watching his nose scrunch up when he takes a drink, something she’s noticed him doing before. Finally, after a long period of silence between the two of them, Karen asks Frank what she’s been thinking since he stumbled in.

  
“Frank, why are you here?” Karen watches him closely, gauging his reaction.

  
He seems unable to meet her eyes, instead choosing to inspect the remainder of his coffee. She can seem him mulling the question around in his head, trying to decide on the best way to answer. “Didn’t have anywhere else to go.” He says finally, simply. As if he just decided that he would drop by for a visit while he was in town.

  
“I told you,” Karen began. “I told you that night in the woods that you were dead to me. Why didn’t you listen?” Her voice cracked on the last sentence, raw with emotion. Emotion that Karen didn’t fully understand.

  
“Don’t know.” Frank answered. “Didn’t feel right, leaving things like that.” He shrugs, as if what he said was that easy to dismiss, but he’s looking right at her now, not flinching away like he usually does in her presence. He usually acts around her like he can’t bear to look her in the eyes, but right now his gaze is unflinching, his eyes raw and red with lack of sleep.

  
Karen can’t help herself, can’t take the words back when she says, “I’m glad you didn’t.” There, they’ve escaped and she can’t get them back and then more words, everything, starts pouring out. “I saw that ship in the harbor, what you did to it. I sat there the entire night, watching them pull body after body out of the water. And I sat there hoping that you wouldn’t be one of them.” Tears start to well up in her eyes, the outpouring of emotion from her is overwhelming, and her voice sounds brittle even to her own ears. “The police thought I was scared, because I thought you survived. I was scared because I thought you were dead.” Karen can’t bear to look at him now, can’t bear to see his eyes. Instead she looks down at her hands, laying in her lap, willing herself not to start sobbing.

  
But when the first tear drop lands on her open palm, she can feel Frank taking her hand in his much larger one. Her hand, with the chipped nails and slim fingers, is at such contrast with Frank’s. Scarred and bruised across the knuckles, his fingers are thick and blunt. Karen savors the contact for one glorious moment before, reluctantly, pulling away.

  
Standing up, Karen straightens her skirt and wipes away the tears in her eyes. She forces herself to not look back at Frank as she speaks to him. “You better get some sleep.”

  
There’s a very pregnant pause before Frank responds gruffly, “You too, ma’am.”

  
When Karen woke up the next morning Frank Castle, along with any evidence of him ever being there, had mysteriously vanished.


	2. Unwelcome Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt calls Karen hoping to speak with her, but Karen has more pressing matters to deal with at the moment. Like how The Punisher was sitting on her couch with an open wound, probably getting blood all over it, again.

Karen’s phone chirped out a cheery tone from inside her purse. Digging around the oversized bag, she managed to find it. Karen took one glance at the display and saw that it was Matt calling her, again. Sighing, she accepted the call.

“Karen, we need to talk.” Not even a hello. Matt’s voice was tense. It had been almost a month since that night in the office. That night when he finally told her the truth. But as far as Karen is concerned, it was too little too late.

She was standing in the lobby of her building, waiting for the elevator. At 10:30 at night the place was abandoned. “Alright, you’ve got me on the phone, let’s talk.”

Karen could hear a sigh from the other end of the ling. “Not now Karen, we need to talk in person." 

The elevator doors opened with a ping and Karen stepped inside and hit the button for her floor. “I can’t see you right now.”

“Then when?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because Matt, as far as I’m concerned, nothing has changed. You still bailed on Foggy and I. You let us down when we needed you the most. But now, instead of thinking that you’re a narcissistic, serial-womanizing alcoholic…” Her voice raised on the last words, almost yelling into the phone, so when the doors opened, Karen was faced with two very uncomfortable looking neighbors. She let them into the elevator while she stepped off, letting the doors close completely before continuing. “Now I know that instead, you’re just running around the city getting your ass kicked, acting like a fucking saint. So until you get down off your cross to join us regular people, I have nothing more to say to you.”

There’s a short pause as Karen juggles with her phone, keys, and purse while she struggles to fit the key into the lock. Just as she’s turning the key, there’s a soft chuckle from Matt’s end of the line.

“What!?” Karen demands angrily, she chews him out and all he can do is laugh at her?

“You just reminded me of someone I know.” Karen opens the door and closes it behind her, making sure to pull the deadbolt and chain into place. She turns around, getting ready to yell at Matt some more, but Karen stops dead in her tracks. There’s a man sitting on her couch.

“Look Matt, I’ve got to go I’ll talk to you later.” Karen doesn’t wait for Matt’s response before ending the call. She tucks her keys and phone into her bag before setting it down and kicking off her pumps.

“Frank.” Karen acknowledges the man sitting on the couch. “You came back.” She tried not to sound pleased but probably failing. She noticed he’d already shrugged off the heavy bulletproof vest, which now lay on the floor. Only a thin undershirt covered his broad chest.

His face was cast in shadow, he hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights. Frank must be used to the dark. “Do you know how to stitch a wound?” He asks, his breathing labored.

“I can stitch a ripped seam back together, does that count?” Frank nods and Karen goes to the bathroom to fetch the first-aid kit.

She brings it back out to the living room, switching on several lights as she does. She’s going to need a lot of light for this. The apartment is flooded with light and Karen can see Frank better know. He turns around, his back facing her, showing Karen the wound. Starting in the middle of his back, the cut stops just before the end of his rib cage. It was probably at least six inches long and very deep. The fabric around the cut was soaked with blood. Frank’s shirt clung to his back, sticky with blood and sweat.

Karen tries to work off his shirt, being mindful of the wound, but after several grunts of complaint from Frank, Karen decided to simply cut the shirt off. She digs around in the kit for the bandage scissors. When she finds them, she works the tip underneath the hem of his shirt and shears the fabric cleanly up the middle. Karen parts the two halves of the shirt, Frank’s back now completely exposed. Without being told, Frank lies face-down on the couch, one hand propping up his head, the other dangling off the side of the couch.

Breathing deeply through her nose, Karen finds the needle and sutures and begins threading the fine thread through the eye on the slightly curved needle. She resolves not to faint as she mops the blood off Frank’s back. Without all the blood, the wound didn’t actually look that bad. The blood made it look worse than it actually was. Taking a deep breath, Karen pushes the needle through the skin and pulls it back out on the other side, drawing the skin taut. She lays one hand gently on Frank’s back, holding him steady as the other stitches the wound shut. His skin burned underneath her hand.

There were scars, so many other scars across his back. Too many to count. Karen wonders how he got them all. Idly, she wonders what it would be like to trace each and every one with her fingertips, questioning him about all of them as she does. She’s snapped back to reality when Frank flinches as she works the needle through his skin.

After nearly a minute of complete silence, save for the sound of labored breath from Frank, Karen couldn’t take it anymore. “It would help if you said something.” Karen finally said, not being able to bear the silence. She needed something, anything, to distract her mind as she did this. It was most certainly not like stitching a hem.

“What do you want me to say.” Frank asks from underneath her.

“Maybe you could tell me how you got stabbed in the back?” Karen offers, genuinely curious, but more anxious to distract herself from the grisly task at hand.

Frank chuckles, his back moving underneath her hands, nearly causing her to miss a stitch. “Some punk got lucky and I got cut. It was close too. Another few inches to the south and I wouldn’t be here right now. The guy who did this to me, however, wasn’t so fortunate.” Frank doesn’t go into any further detail and he doesn’t have to. Karen know exactly what Frank gets up to at night. He wasn’t like Matt, he didn’t send robbers to the emergency room with broken bones. He sent them to the morgue. She should be appalled by him, but she wasn’t. It was hard too, when she'd seen as more of Frank's psyche than anyone else alive.

At last, she finished the final stitch. Karen found the tube of disinfectant and slathering on a good share of it to the stitches, she applied a bandage and made Frank promise to pull any of the stitches fighting someone, at least not tonight.

They sat together in silence as Frank gathered up the pieces of his ruined shirt. Karen was trying not to sneak a look at his bare chest. She had gotten a good look at him shirtless the last time he was here, but at the time she’d been too distracted by the bullet in his shoulder to appreciate the view. She tried not to stare at the hard lines of muscle, the harsh v-lines that ended abruptly at the waist of his pants. Again she wondered what it would be like to run her hands across the smooth skin of his broad chest.

Frank glanced over at Karen, apparently oblivious to her staring. Karen pretended to be very interested in literally anything other than his prying eyes. The ones that always seemed to cut straight through the bullshit. “Was that Murdock on the phone?” He asks. Straight past the bullshit, just as usual.

Karen doesn’t bother looking up as she responds. “Yes. If you must know, that was him.”

“And how’s that going?” Frank asks with that funny, half-not-quite-a-smile that he gets sometimes. The one where it looks like he’s telling a joke and trying not to laugh.

Near hysterical laughter bubbled up in the back of Karen’s throat. Her whole body shook with manic laughter, trying desperately to hold it in. Frank almost looked offended as he gazed at her. He must think she’s mad. Karen thinks so too.

“What?” He demands, when she finally begins to taper off.

Karen smiled. It had been so long since she’d really laughed. Come to think of it, it had been so long since she’d really smiled and now she couldn’t stop herself. “It’s just that,” she chokes out between chuckles. “You’ve broken into my apartment, twice, bleeding to death and now you’re asking me about my love life?”

It took a moment, but Karen watched as a smile broke out across Frank’s beaten-up face. He shook his head as if to say, ‘ _Can you believe this lady?’_  A soft chuckle and he asks, “Why not?”

Speechless, Karen is absolutely speechless. She’ll never get over the nerve of him. She thinks over his question a moment. Finally, she says, “Because Matt wants a version of me that doesn’t exist. He wants someone, _innocent,_ someone he can protect. Someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to come home and wonder if today’s the day that someone’s going to decide to knock off little Miss Page. He wants someone who doesn’t know what the smell of blood and gunpowder is like. He wants someone who isn’t me.” Karen’s voice cracks and she feels like she’s about to cry. No, she doesn’t want to cry, she’s angry. She’s angry that Matt forced all these expectations and ideals onto, things she never wanted. And she’s angry that she tried to fill those expectations and that she wanted so desperately to.

“I’ve killed a man.” Karen whispers, afraid of the weight these simple words carry. “You’re the only person I’ve told. Matt doesn’t know. If he found out, that image of me that he’s placed on a pedestal will shatter. So when you ask me why I can’t love him, why I can’t have him in my life, it’s because our entire relationship is built on a lie. I loved the kind, compassionate, blind lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen, and he loved the sweet, innocent, small-town girl from Vermont. But the truth is, neither of them exist anymore, if they ever did at all.” Karen says softly.

A hand, a strong, calloused hand reaches up and grips Karen gently by the shoulder. It’s meant to be a comforting gesture from Frank. She can tell he’s hesitant and unsure by the contact. He probably hasn’t had any real human touch for ages. Unlike last time he was here, Karen doesn’t shy away from his touch, she leans in, pressing herself against his chest. Her hands wrap around his waist, pulling him closer. The hand that isn’t holding her shoulders tightly against his chest now grips her by the waist. Karen rests her forehead against his chest, savoring the contact. She recalls the last time they were this close, he’d thrown himself on top of her to save her from a hail of bullets. She’d been so afraid then, afraid that he was there to kill her, then afraid that the Blacksmith would do the job instead. Now it’s just the two of them, without the threat of death hanging over them, and Karen wanted to enjoy the moment while it lasted. Frank buries his face in the crook of her neck.

Karen wasn’t sure, but she swore that Frank was, crying. Yes, Frank Castle was crying. She pretended not to notice, instead they just held onto each other, locked in the other’s arms, neither of them willing to let go just yet.

So when they finally pull apart and Karen insists that she must get some sleep, she invites Frank to join her. She changes into a nightgown and he simply pulls off his boots. They both slide under the covers, only their hands touching, taking their comfort in the mere presence of each other. For the first time in so long, Karen sleeps through the night, her rest undisturbed by nightmares. But when she wakes up, Frank had once again vanished.


End file.
